Weimar in the Twenty-First Century

This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm not with you, o? Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshherers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours. Weimar is a small German city yet it looms large in European history In the nineteen twenties, it was synonymous with liberalism, internationalism, and the fine arts. Yet, within a decade, many of its residents had embraced Nazism And Hitler was professing his love for the city In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Kater Heoyer speaks to Spenscimism about how the city that gave its name to Germany's great social democratic experiment succumbed to tyranny Hello Kasha, I wonder if I could start by pointing you in the direction of a quote you cite in your new book on Weimar. The quote is from Roman Herazog, who is president of Germany in the nineteen nineties and in it, Herzk says Weimar is Germany in a nutshell a time in which not only culture and thoughts were at home also Philistinism and barbarism Why is that Kuter? Why in the first half of the twentieth century did the fate of this small ish city in the center of Germany emblematic representative of the fate of an entire nation. That is a very good question because at first sight there's nothing particularly special about Weimer. It's quite a small town. I mean, it's picturesque, quaint enough with sort of cobbled streets and timber framed houses and all that But it isn't as such kind of a large city or something where kind of big events happen in the past. What it is though, it's always been regarded as a sort culture center in the heart of Germany. It's right, almost exactly in the center. of the country and famous people have always been drawn to it. So you have For example, Jan Volfkon from Gete, who's kind of the national poet, I would say, perhaps comparable to what Shakespeare means to someone from England. I guess it's Geta is that to Germany. His friend Schiller, who was also a famous poet lived there. you know, you have sort of Bach and Nietzsche and great thinkers, European thinkers all spending time in Weimar through the centuries. And so after the First World War, when Germany is really having a deep think about itself and trying to reset and become a new country, that appeals. They're kind of looking to a legacy that isn't Prussian and militarist and Berlin had the capital of Prussia before it became the capital of Germany. and so it didn't quite seem right when you want a fresh start Apart from the fact that Berlin also wasn't particularly safe in nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, after the First World War, but it didn't seem quite right to just carry on as before because something had clearly gone wrong. And so Weimmer appeals as a place of civility and culture and sort of the ideals really of what it means to be a sort of German thinker that' why So many decision makers in the nineteen twenties impint on it, you know, all the way from kind of socialists and communists who are interested in it as a cultural hub through to Democrats and Avangeard culture all the way to Adolf Hitler who visits the town over forty times because he too sees it as a kind of point to relaunch. So that's what Rman Had was talking about. when he said basically you get everything in that time. It represents everything that Germany is and did in the inter the war pereriod. Sure. C we talk about the history of Oinmark before first We warn a bit more detail then please, because I guess most of our listeners will associate Rimar with the famous and ultimately ill fated attempt it Constitutional democracy in Germany in the nineteen twenties between the end of the First of War and rise of the Nazis. But before, as you just said, the city have already acquired a sort of a reputation as a kind of a cultural capital, as an epicenter of and architecture did it acquire that reputation? It's sort of something that that really took place over time, I think, you know once you had Guta in particular had a huge impact because he lived there for a long time, He died in Weimmer and he was also the director of the theatre then as he's one of Germany's most kind of foremost poets, but also he wrote plays and you know, he had a huge impact on German culture and that Legacy you can still see that today when you go to Weimar, most tourists in Weimar and it is a tourist town don't go there for the kind of history that I describe in my book, but they go there because they want to be where Gethe was and where he lived. It's a bit like Stratford, I guess in Britain, Stratford upon Eve in that sense as know people want to go to the heart of what German culture is So once you have that set up sort with Gota as its center, it becomes very attractive to other thinkers over you the sort of decades and centuries. And you get all sorts of people, you know that I mentioned before and also know people like Liston, musicians, artists who are drawn by this kind of idea that they're in the place where Gota was and they go there. And you still find this in the nineteen twenties when kind of artists and architects and other peopleeople are looking for somewhere to reset kind of the things that made in their minds made German culture great. And that I think is the reason why this kind of image of Weimmer as the locus of German culture perpetuates itself almost across time Even today when you go then when you go to events and things you can see how some very notable retirees, you know still go to Weimmer because they spend kind of a life that they regard themselves as important and then they go and they want to retire in a place where other famous people before them have sort of gone. still it still works today, that sort of appeal, I guess. And as you said there, in the nineteen twenties, the city status is kind of cultural center endured and arrtists and architects group drawn to the city in that decade. Can you give us some examples of that, please? Am I right in saying this became a centre of the Bauhouse movement? Yeah, that's absolutely right. and it's one of the things I talk about at length in the book because I think it's interesting that you have The Bauhaus movement, which is still incredibly influential today, it's where we get things like prefabricated housing, things like IKEA furniture, you know kind of the idea that somebody designs something really thoughtfully, but then it gets mass produced and everyone can use it. And it's not as expensive as kind of know artisan products that get made by hand. That kind of stuff all comes from the from the Bauhaus movement and when they first set out in the nineteen twenties, again The thought is, you know where should they recreate kind of this new German culture, this new way of living, being, having the objects around you. And again, you know you have Walter Gorpi's already a big name in German architecture. He' sort of set up in Berlin originally But he also thinks, no Berlin isn't the place for it. Let's go to Weimar and sets up the Bauhaus schoolchool in Weimmer and then draws some very, very famous names like Kandinsky and Klean and others basically to Weimar because they follow him and they follow the cultural reputation that Weimar has. So he creates in this small quaint town in the center of Germany, that's not near anywhere. It's literally right in the middle betweenort of Munich and b Frankfurt is three hours away. Berlin is two and a half hours away. It's virtually in the middle of nowhere. And he manages to attract this kind of really influential circle of international architists and artists to that place to kind of launch a new type of German culture from there. Did you get a sense that the people of Weimar were proud of the city's status kind of metropolitan face of Germany's democratic experiment in the nineteen twenties and the fact that these's, you know Or' it a flocking to the city in this period? You get a very mixed response. Some people are really intrigued by that. Also the fact that German democracy is set up there in nineteen nineteen, so the first elected Parliament meets there, which is why we still call it the Weimmer Republic today It's a massive spectacle and people are very acutely aware of the fact that they suddenly find themselves in the middle of things. know it's kind a sleepy kind of conservative town and suddenly journalists flock in reporters are everywhere taking pictures. you know the kind of weimer townscape is suddenly in the national newspapers and even international newspapers, I mean, I founduff reports from the New York Times and places that suddenly you know report from Weimmer. So some people are quite excited by that and they think, you know that this is kind of putting their town on the map as it were. But a lot of other people because it is quite a conservative place and because it's associated with German high culture, they feel that this new quite avanguarde modernist thing doesn't belong in Weima. And so right from the beginning, Horpio was is kind of describing how he pokes this hornet's nest, as he puts it, kind of by putting a very modernist movement in a very conservative town that is proud of its history, that creates a conflict right from the beginning as well. especially as the types of students that he attracts. I mean, first of all, the first intake has got more women than men, which is unusual And then you also get lots of international students, you have lots of Jewish people involved in the movement. It's quite an internationalist, modernist urban thing to blk into the middle of a kind of small town that sees itself as the guardian of traditional German culture. And so people regard these students who go sort of skinny dipping in the River Im and stuff like that. know and they have this hippiesque almost protro hippesque appearance They walk around in these long coats and sandals and things and you know, people look at them and think this isn't per and, you know, have this kind of immediate hostility there as well. So you get by kind of depending on who you look at basically, some people are excited by it. other people think it is completely going in the wrong direction, this is not what Weimar is about. One of the questions you pose in the book is how did Germany turn in a few short years from one of the world's most liberal democracies to a genocidal dictatorship And I guess nowhere was this journey more Stark than him, whymar, as you note in the book, which appears have embraced Natism You know as enthusiastically as anywhere else in Germany. when for you did this process begin? When did in this sort of great social democratic experiment begins to appear in Weimar. Well, it's quite difficult to pin on a particular moment. I think even in nineteen nineteen when the Republic is founded there and you get this Because people are worried about communist uprisings and other people who might disturb this kind of assembly that is set up in nineteen nineteen to write the new Constitution. There's this corordon around Weimmer, a military cordon. they try and protect it from outsiders. So suddenly the town of Weimmer is sort cut off from the outside world and whilst this democracy is being set up in the middle, even then you get people having reservations about that and being sort of skeptical of what this new Germany is like. So one example I give is the sister of Friedich Nnizsche, the famous philosopher. His sister lives in Weimar Elizabeth And she right from the beginnings, for instance, she is against the fact that women are given the right to vote which is the first time that you have a female franchise in Germany, as is the same across various European countries after the First World War. And she campaigns against that and she says, this isn't right, This is not what society is about. She's very old at this point and kind of believes in this old system, this kind of imperial Germany that she grew up in. So that reservation is there from the beginning among some people. Having said that voting figures are very high, turnurnout is very high. Women go voting in large numbers. peopleople are also excited about this new democracy. So from the beginning, you have this sort of dual track really of people who believe in it and people who want to hold on to a more conservative world And then because I think the Fymer system doesn't really ever fully kind of take root in the sense that it feels stable. So you have Right at the beginning, a lot of violence. as I say, the assembly has to be protected You have sort of the early economic crisis, hyperinflation. I describeed that quite a bit in nineteen twenty three. It just never ever settles in that sense. And even in the so called golden years in the middle, when there is a bit of stability because American money is being poured into Germany, people still feel that yes, it is settling, but there's something quite fragile about that system and people do know that there's quite a thin veneer between them the abyss. So that's why the subtitle of my book is Life onn the Edge of Catastrophe and that's actually what it feels like to people. They're permanently negotiating that. So this idea that somebody one day might come along and create a more stable thing with a dictatorship or some more autocratic system that appeals to many people in Germany right from the beginning. I think it's also because the democratic culture still quite young But again, Elizabeth Nietzsche is one example where she constantly looks to Italy where Mussolini, much earlier than Hitler, sets up his dictatorship and many people are looking towards that as kind of like an example of what should happen in Germany. So that thought is there from the beginning and it just the balance between that and the people were still excited about democracy shift over time, I think, quite gradually. How did the economic shocks at the nineteen twenties affect Biomar the hyperinflation and the mass unemployment? Did that have an impact on the city as the nineteen twenties progressed. Yeah, I think massively. I mean I try and trace that a little bit in my book by looking at the actual lives of people who lived in Vima. So I've called a kind of cast of characters, if you will who I follow through the book and the ideas that you can really see in different lives, what the impact of these big things, big developments that we normally look at actually is. And at the center of my book is Karl Verres, who's a shopkeeper and runs kind of a stationary shop right in the town center. And he's really interesting with the hyperinflation because he sort of says it's an absolute madness, he goes and tries to trade kind of typewriters which he so in shop And he says suddenly they have to put so many zeros on it that they're not even sure how to report it to the tax authorities. He's just saying the numbers are even completely ludicrous. And he's putting signs up saying, Ohh you can buy this typewriter for. I don't know how many million today. Take home immediately, know because if you leave it, if say you buy it and then you come back two days later to pay for it. It'll be like twice that price again. so it's just absolutely mad. And they try and get through it somehow and he still writes in his diary how they went hiking and how they did things together as a couple. He buys a used bicycle for something like two million do in that year because he kind of thinks A might as well. Be later on the same money would have got him like an egg. And so you know, it's an interesting thing how people try and cling on to little kind of remnants of normality whilst financially the rug's pulled out from under them. I write some extraordinary facts in the book, especially in relation to the way that the people of Weimar sort embraced Nazism at the end of the nineteen twenties and the early nineteen thirties. You say that the Hitler used received its name in Weimar, that the Hitler salute was first presented to the public in Weimar, and that support for the Nazis in elections is higher in Weymark than Was the average across Germany? Do you get a sense that the NA particularly targeted Weimar because of its status in the nineteen twenties and his position in the Republic and his attempted democracy in Germany? They did. I mean it's quite obvious in the way that they talk about it. So Hitler makes a deliberate point of appearing regularly in the theater in Weimar, which is where the Republic was founded. That's where the delegates met in nineteen nineteen to draft the Constitution and sort of declare the Republic and Hitler goes in that very same space. and then you can see his sort of Henchman describing that and saying Haha in the place where once Friich Ebert, the first president of Weimer spoke and founded the Republic now stands out of Hitler on the stage and destroys this very experiment. And it's actually Hitler himself who coined the term Weimar Republic, which many people don't realize, it's actually called the German Reichel And very few people kind of use that terminology that we now use and then Hitler calls at the Weimmer Republic To almost sneer at it, to say it's not a German thing, it's not the German Reich, it's a weimmer thing as in this spirit of kind of liberal ocry is wrong and that's what he wants to override by reclaiming Weimar for himself. But yes, it's absolutely that status of being the culture capital. whoever you know the idea that whoever controls it kind of controls German culture and German thought is certainly around. And Hitler also just really likes Weimar. It's safe, it's conservative He even describes how he can just sit in a cafe somewhere. he doesn't have to have it cleared by his men for security purposes because there are very few communists in Weimar. It's not an urban kind of workers town. And you know elsewhere like stones will get thrown at his car or he'll get attacked or people try and assassinate him. And in Weimer you can sit in a cafe and chat to people as they come around. And so he spends a lot of private time there as well, which I find quiet interesting when I was researching it that he just goes for walks in the park and sits in cafes and talks to people. He likes Weimer, basasically, he declares at one point to one of his minions there. I love Weimmer, I just love it. and that's I think quite remarkable as well that it hasn't got the status of S Munich, which is seen as the capital of the Nazi movement But it's still hugely important to Hitler personally as kind of like almost like a private retreat and somewhere to relaunch the movement from. And just one thing to add maybe on that you get And six Nazis elected into the local state parliament. So Weimer is the capital of Thia, the state of Thhingia, and that parliament in Thorhingia, the state Parliament, has got six Nazis in very early on in nineteen twenty four when the movement is still very small, and they're required to form a majority, even though there's only six of them. And because they say, well we will tolerate this conservative government and allow it to function On if you legalizeed the party again it had been banned after Hitler tried to overthrow the government in nineteen twenty three. And so theingia is one of the very first places where the movement gets relegalized after Hitler's coup attempt in nineteen twenty three. It becomes like a safe haven when the party is still banned kind of everywhere else. One of the Nazi sort of henchmen at one point says, actually Thoringia has kind of replaced Bavaria as the kind of safe haven of the party and it's not a surprise that Hitler kind of goes there so often and relaunches this movement from there. The very first Nazi partarty rally, the proper sort big ones, happens not in Nuremberg, where the later famous ones happen, but in Weimmer in nineteen twenty six. and that's indeed, as you say, where the Hitler youth is set up and other things. decided. So it's an important launch pad for the Nazi movement in the mid nineteen twenties. As you've already said, in your book, you very much tried to tell the story of Weimar through the experiences of its residents, of people who sort of live through this extraordinary turbulent period in its history You' mentioned Carvyrich. I wonder if you could also talk about someone else, something from a bit more of an exalted Grangu features in your book quite heavily And that's Harry Grph Kessler. I mean, I guess Kessler's experiences reveal how the idealism of the early nineteen twenties was shattered by the march of Nazism and how realistic, liberal, people re placing kind of an intolerable position towards the end of that decade. Can you tell us a little bit about him? Introduced us to him a little bit, please? Yeah, he's one of my favorite characters in the book because he's just quite funny and sardonic in lots of ways sometimes. but he's basically, as you can guess by his name Harry ount Kessler, he's annglo German count, very international figure, like a dandy kind of figure, if you will, kind of very elegant man who is just as much at home at court in Britain as he is kind of in a beer haall in Germany. he talks to people, he's involved in lots of international kind of negotiations. He's a bit of a diplomat as well. And before the First World War, Weimar was again supposed to be the hub of German culture before the war even started he was part of this kind of new Weimar idea. he wanted to set up a new German high culture there. So he's very attached to the town even though he's not from there and has a house there Villa. so he's an interesting kind of almost outsider insider figure. because he travels internationally, I don't think he falls for the same things that Germans do at the time because he does sit in a barber's chair in Paris or in a bar in London as much as he is actually in Germany. So he often gets like outside feedback and isn't completely immersed in this in the same way that Germans are. He hasn't got this kind of boiling frog phenomenon where you just get used to more and more nationalism, more and more violence, but actually is going in and out He's also gay, which is an interesting dimension of his lifestyle of his because he's not completely you sort of bragging about it because it's illegal in Germany at the time. doesn he's not a card carrying campaigner for gay rights or anything like that, but he does because of that he has got quite a different kind of lifestyle from the traditional family orientated conservative way that a lot of Germans live And so because of that, his diary, which he keeps throughout the whole time is a really interesting source because you get somebody who was there But who observes things with a kind of a bit of detachment, but also this kind of dry humor that comes through all the time. And what was interesting to me is that he was friends with Elizabeth Netzsche, Nietzsches sister who was extremely conservative and old fashioned and becomes increasingly nationalistic. Her entire household, in the end, she brags as brown as a Nazi And she's the only nationalist that she puts to trying to reassure Kessler that she's not. a Nazi herself, but he stays friends with her even though he's very liberal and very democratic minded and actually worries about her going down that route. And that to me is interesting when we live in a world again today where people quite often cut off entire friendships and relationships because you know you drift apart politically from someone and you feel you can't even talk to them anymore because they vote for a different party are on the other side of the cultural divide or something, thoseose two stay friends all the way through and the letters between them are absolutely fascinating exchanges between kind of two sides of elite circles and how they respond to the events around them. Now I guess one of the most emotionally charged passages of a book describes an episode that ccurred after Weimar had been taken by American forces right at the end of the Second World War. justust a few miles away from Weimar was Buchkenwald, one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. In the final days of the war, US troops, as you relate, made the residents of Weimar visit camp to witness the scene of these sort fathomable atrocities heard there, as you described, torture, medical experiments, masses executions Did your research into this, this particular episode kind of alter your thinking? conduct of the people of Weimar during the second World War on that kind of culpability for what had happened at Book and Vub, which after all was right on her doorstep. Yeah, it was a really interesting question to me right from the beginning when I started researching this, how much did people FA actually know about this camp. was virtually on their doorstep And also it's up on a Svima is in a sort of valley on a plane and then the concentration camp is on the only Hill that's right on the outskirts on the on the Eddesburg. So this is a place where people used to go hiking, you know on kind of Sunday outings. In the winter, they go up there to ski and sledge. And so you know there's no way that you can build something there on that scale And people don't know it's there. So that was the assumption with which I sort of started researching this. And then The Americans kind of think the same thing when they arrive there and they see the absolute horrors and they look down kind of from the hill towards the town of Weymer and they think How can people live next to a place where tens of thousands of people were murdered their bodies burned in crematoria, you know, all of the horrors that you just described and not know this. So the Americans assume that they have to show this to people. AC their response. it was filmed the whole thing. The Americans filmed kind of the responses as the people walked through the camp And also to make sure that people don't say afterwards, oh, this is allied propaganda. know they have to see it before the camp gets cleared. And that moment is so interesting because you do see the responses. and Kyal Vyrich, my protagonist is one of them I couldn't believe my luck as a historian when I saw in his diary that he records that moment and how he felt when he was walking around the site. And as he's kind of your everyday erm that's why I put him in the center of the book. He's kind of a lower middle class ordinary guy. H's just one's particularly interesting. And he is shocked by it. He does talk about in this diary kind of way he's in private mode and he knows nobody's going to see it. He does talk about our German downfall and kind of how disgusted that he is and how it fills his heart with disgust to see all of that Even later on, he goes and visits it once it's become a museum. you know, so it's he's not somebody who shies away from the idea that this is a German responsibility But he also doesn't go there and say this is my responsibility. I somehow contributed to that. That doesn't happen either and that was really interesting to me as well And even whilst this history is going on, because he does a lot of hiking, he's a very typical Thoringian man in that response, lots of hiking going on. And he actually explains how even whilst the campus there He goes up on the Eddersburg and he's frustrated with the idea that all the footpaths are closed off because they'd obviously tried to keep people away from the camp And he just says, Oh, that stupid concentration camps there. So now the Eetersburg is just kind of ruined for us to hike on. And it's interesting that in his mind, this is a place where communists get punished, where kind of troublemakers go. It's almost like a prison basically in people's minds. So they have a notion that this isn't the good place, that something bad happens there. I found lots of evidence of children in Weimar taunting each other and saying, oh, if you don't behave, you go up to Buchenweald. know People knew it was there and it was a place of punishment What I don't think people were fully aware of because they weren't in it is the absolute abject brutality of what was going on there. I don't think that people realized that people were tortured in there or that lotots of kind of wanton brutality was going on there. I don't think that was the reality of it. I don't think people but that's not an excuse. People make a choice, a conscious choice not to think about it too much. They do know that people get taken there and that later on Jewish people get taken there en masse as well. they watch them arrive. Bulkwad doesn't have a train station. So they get taken to B by itself and then put on lorries and everyone sees what's going on. So they knew, but they chose not to look too closely and that was probably what I think applies to the majority of German civilians in lots of ways. They knew bad stuff was going on. theirir neighbourors were vanishing but chose not to look too closely or think about it too closely. What happened to Weimmar in the immediate aftermath of the war? Was it in any way Markier's special treatment because of his status in the interwar period? So Weimmer is in an interesting place same as the rest of the Ringya in that it is conquered and occupied by the Americans and then handed over to the Soviets as part of the post war. arrangement and that changeover makes a huge difference to the lives of people because the Americans initially Have got this really kind of strict and almost idealistic approach of we want to denazify the country properly. and they are very harsh to start with with the German population. But then they very quickly ease off and decide that actually Germany needs to rebuild itself in the emergent Cold War at this point to try and basically be an ally. And because that area gets handed over to the Soviets who take the view that everyone who uniform, anyone who's ever been part of any Nazi organization, that's millions of people that kind of Nazi sympathizes and need to be punished for it. That changes everything and Karl is a classic example of that where his life would have taken his post war life would have taken a very different turn had the state in the American zone It does get special treatment in the sense that Bouchenwald itself becomes a national memorial for the GDR for the East German state once it's set up And so that's kind of seen as a symbol of the anti fascist spirit, as it's called afterwards of is supposed to infuse East Germany and the GDR. So they make Buchenwaldt a memorial to Nazi crimes to say we're different, we're setting this up so that people can see it. So to give you one extreme example, the leaders of Buchenwald, the commandant and his wife, the Koch family They were extremely brutal and one of the things that was found on site was a lampshade that was supposed to have been made by human skin. And that lampshade was actually exhibited during the GDI years, so people who went to Buchenwed saw that and it was supposed to show people how depraved the Nazi regime was. After the Berlin Wall came down, that was immediately removed and a completely different exhibition being put in place And so that's an example of how Bothenweald specifically became a sort of central place, I would say, for memory culture in the GDR. How did the people of Weimar themselves look back on this period of history from the vantage point of the twenty first century? Well, for a long time, they tried to go back to being and they still do, I suppose in many ways, to being in this culture place As I mentioned earlier, the idea that Tours still go there because they want to see the places where Guruta stayed, they want to see his house. They go there for the same reasons that people did pre World War one. So in that regard, Weimar still has the same reputation in lots of ways as being a sort of hub of German culture high culture. And Bauhaus is added to that. So despite the fact that the Bauaus was actually driven away from Weimer kind of expelled from it almost because of conservative opposition to it. desespite that, Bauhaus is very much part of the landscape in Weima today. When you go there there's a huge Bauhaus museum, the little university that it has kind of like a college is also called the Bauhaus University. You know they're very proud of this The fact that the Bauaus started there, and that's part of it. And it's only now, I would say, in recent years that it's begun to think about its role in the Nazi system as well. So there is now a little exhibition, for example, about the forced labor that took place in Weiman and the many thousands of people who died in the factories there who were forced to work in them Previously a lot of the Nazi buildings, were was interesting in that it was because of its status, it was kind of radically changed in the Nazi era. They built these kind of giant party complexes there, like a local Nazi forum. So huge symmetrical kind of colonnades and a great big People's hall where you were supposed to have tens of thousands of people in there Listening to speakers. at people's haall is now a shopping center. There isn't a plaque or anything in there that tells you what it was And the actual kind of party buildings are now used by the Thoringian State administration, you know just painted in a different color. They're kind of quite colorful now, but you can still see the sort of neoclassical architecture of Nazism there. That was kind of supposed to be blended into the background for a while. whilst now I think FimMA has a bit in recent years, WeimM has become a lot more open about that So for example, there was an exhibition quite recently about how the Bauhaus and Nazism actually emerged intertwined much more than people thought. and that was kind of a groundbreaking exhibition, quite controversial as well that reason, But it's getting there, I think it's acknowledging that more. What they still don't want, I think, is people going there for that reason and kind of seeing it as a sort of hub of Naziism. The focus is still very much on the culture and on Weimar as the starting point of Weimar Republic on that democratic history. And not for our listeners, just to say that if you'd like to hear more from Quter on German history on the History extxtra podcast, then you can check out an episode I recorded with her recently on the German statesman Otto von Bismarck I'll leave the link to that episode in the episode description One final question for you, Kata. You've written that no amount of history, tradition or culture is sufficient on its own to safeguard against a takeover by a ruthless totalitarian ideology There seems to lie in those words, a warning for our own time that we shouldn't come to complacency that we shouldn't assume that the catastrophe that Bethfel Weimar couldn't happen to us. I mean, do you see it that way? Is that what you meant by those words? Well, it's certainly a warning in there because I think people thought after the First World War, this catastrophe is over. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. then a new democracy was set up with all kind of, you know bells and whistles and this kind of whole idea that this is a new era and it starts. and just one generation later you get the Second World War. And you know the idea that the kind of spirit of Fer as people even called it at the time, this kind of culture civil spirit of Germanness is supposed to infuse this new state, was almost seen as a safeguard against kind of slipping back into more autocratic and militaristic cultures And I think there's something quite disturbing about the idea that people at the time didn't see that coming and yet most people either tolerated or supported what was going on There's very, very little resistance. I make a big point out of that in the book as well. It's not like people sit there and they're absolutely shocked and astonished about what happens after nineteen thirty three. It's almost a boiling frog sort scenario. They sit in the middle of it and these things happen around them and bit by bit People are so focused on their own lives that bit by bit they tolerate the violence, just the unspeakable nature of what the Nazis do because they are so focused on dealing with their own lives. and I think there's a danger again today where with the wars that are going on with the economic problems that we have, with this kind of pessimism that is around where people are looking at their own lives, how to save themselves, their family, you know, how to set themselves up safely, that we lose sight of the things that are happening around us and you the kind of responsibility that we have as individuals and as societies to make sure that we stay an open and democratic society. So that's certainly I mean I don't make a big point out of saying the world then is what it is today. I think it is a fundamentally different world, even though it looks quite similar in lots of ways So we're not seeing a repeat of history, but I think there's still a warning there for us to be kind of alert to the things that are happening around us and the personal and collective responsibilities that we have. Kasha, thank you so much for that, than you for sparing the time to talk to me today. Thank you Was Catcha Hoya speaking to Spener isn' Racha is a German British historian and writer, and her new book, Weimar, Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, tells the extraordinary story of a city that has been described as Germany in a nutshell